Portrait of Emil Ludwig

Birthday profile

Emil Ludwig

German writer (1881-1948)

Born
January 25, 1881
Died
September 17, 1948
Zodiac sign
Aquarius
Birth year
1881

About Emil Ludwig

Emil Ludwig (25 January 1881 – 17 September 1948) was a German-Swiss author, known for his biographies and study of historical "greats." == Biography == Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau (now part of Poland) on 25 January 1881. Born into a Jewish family, he was raised as a non-Jew but was not baptized. "Many persons have become Jews since Hitler," he said. "I have been a Jew since the murder of Walther Rathenau [in 1922], from which date I have emphasized that I am a Jew." Ludwig studied law but chose writing as a career. At first he wrote plays and novellas, also working as a journalist. In 1906, he moved to Switzerland, but, during World War I, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and Istanbul. He became a Swiss citizen in 1932, later emigrating to the United States in 1940. After the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talat Pasha, the main architect of the Armenian genocide, Ludwig wrote, "Only when a society of nations has organized itself as the protector of international order will no Armenian killer remain unpunished, because no Turkish Pasha has the right to send a nation into the desert". During the 1920s, he achieved international fame for his popular biographies which combined historical fact and fiction with psychological analysis. After his biography of Goethe was published in 1920, he wrote several similar biographies, including one about Bismarck (1922–24) and another about Jesus (1928).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Emil Ludwig timeline

  1. Born: January 25, 1881
  2. Died: September 17, 1948

The world when Emil Ludwig was born

Emil Ludwig was born in 1881. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlinePresident Garfield assassinated
  • Technology milestoneFirst electric power plant (Godalming, England)
  • World population~1.41B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderJames A. Garfield / Chester A. Arthur
  • U.S. population51.0M

1881 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Emil Ludwig's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18812026
Population51.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.